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PHP

Andrew Dickens
Andrew Dickens
18,352 Points
Posted by Andrew Dickens
Andrew Dickens
18,352 Points

Turn $key into an array

I want to asort() the keys in my associate array and echo them

I thought I'd use while/list/each to get the keys, put them into an array and then asort() that? Maybe I'm going the wrong way about it but any ideas how to do this?

$animals = array(
    'tiger' => '4 legs',
    'dolphin' => '0 legs',
    'ostrich' => '2 legs',
    'elephant' => '4 legs',
    'buffalo' => '4 legs',
    "hawk" => '2 legs'
);

while (list($key, $val) = each($animals)) {
    ###turn $key into an array #####
    $key_array = ######;
    asort($key_array);
    echo $key_array;   
}
Algirdas Lalys
Algirdas Lalys
9,389 Points
Algirdas Lalys
Algirdas Lalys
9,389 Points

Hi Andrew,

Could you tell me more what sorted array you would like to be, I didn't understood. There are a few functions for arrays. For example if you want to sort by keys you should use ksort($animals) and the output would be.

array(6) {                                                                                                                                                         
  ["buffalo"]=> string(6) "4 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["dolphin"]=> string(6) "0 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["elephant"]=> string(6) "4 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["hawk"]=> string(6) "2 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["ostrich"]=> string(6) "2 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["tiger"]=> string(6) "4 legs"                                                                                                                                               
}

and if you need sorted by value then you can use asort($animals) and the output would be.

array(6) {                                                                                                                                                         
  ["dolphin"]=>  string(6) "0 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["hawk"]=> string(6) "2 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["ostrich"]=> string(6) "2 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["buffalo"]=> string(6) "4 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["elephant"]=> string(6) "4 legs"                                                                                                                                               
  ["tiger"]=>  string(6) "4 legs"                                                                                                                                               
}

And of course there are plenty more functions on arrays.

2 Answers

Andrew Dickens
Andrew Dickens
18,352 Points
Andrew Dickens
Andrew Dickens
18,352 Points

I guess the question is in the title, how to turn the keys into an array, don't think about the functions on arrays. I want to turn the original array into an array that looks like this array=(tiger, dolphin, ostrich, elephant, buffalo, hawk );

Algirdas Lalys
Algirdas Lalys
9,389 Points
Algirdas Lalys
Algirdas Lalys
9,389 Points

Hmm, maybe this will do it.

foreach($animals as $key => $animal) {
  $animals[] = $key;
  // delete old values of assiociative array
  unset($animals[$key]);
}
var_dump($animals);